


gonna hitch a ride

by fourshoesfrank



Category: Original Work
Genre: !!, Buses, Gen, My OCs, Wizards, Words
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-25
Updated: 2020-12-25
Packaged: 2021-03-11 05:40:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,486
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28309875
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fourshoesfrank/pseuds/fourshoesfrank
Summary: imagine you get on the bus to go home from school and there's already a dude on there, dressed like a cartoon wizard, arguing with the driver. how would u react
Comments: 2
Kudos: 1





	gonna hitch a ride

**Author's Note:**

> if you follow me on twitter you've definitely heard something about the word wizard lol i love them so much please enjoy

"...telling you, Shawn, that's a totally dumb reason to break up with somebody. Just, like, tell her you're sorry or some shit. Flowers, y'know."

"No way, man! She broke my window, and I gotta have  _plywood_ in there until my uncle comes back from Arkansas to fix it."

"Exactly, just get back with her once your window's fixed! You're being a baby for no reason."

"I swear to god, Sean..."

Emily sighed and turned the volume of her earbuds up as far as it would go. She was desperately trying not to hear the pair of boys beside her at the bus stop, because they had been discussing her cousin's love life for the past ten minutes. Specifically, they were discussing whether Shawn Williams should try to re-enter said love life. 

"Hey, what's goin on?" a new voice asked, deeper than the other two. That would be Shaun Mayfield, the tallest boy in their senior class. Sean and Shawn greeted him and Emily heard the smack-clap of the little 'secret handshake' they'd had since freshman year. She shoved her earbuds deeper into her ear canals and looked around for any sign that her bus was getting closer. 

The street in front of the four teenagers was packed with rush hour traffic. Countless yellow school buses crept past, but there was no sign of the gray metro bus that Emily and the three boys took. It was already ten minutes late. The boys didn't even seem to notice. 

"Hey, what time is it?" Sean asked. 

Shaun consulted his phone and replied, "Almost ten after."

"Ten after what?" "Four, dumbass." "Don't you mean sixteen?" "No, ten after!" "Yeah, ten after sixteen." "No way, dude, fuck the military and their confusing clock thingy."

Emily couldn't even hear her music any longer. She took the earbuds out, stuffed them into her pocket, and walked back to the bench the boys were spread out on. She stood there for a moment before Shaun obligingly shifted his bulk out of the way and let her sit down. Hopefully, they wouldn't try to talk to her. 

No such luck. "You're in Alwein's class next semester, right?" Sean asked. He dug around in his backpack for a moment before triumphantly producing a crumpled schedule. "'Cause I got her seventh period," he said, leaning around Shaun to show it to Emily. 

She shook her head and took out her own equally crumpled-up schedule paper. "I got transferred to Mrs. Vlittner last minute." She pointed to the inky black slash marks through Georgia Alwein's name. Sean glanced at her paper with a disappointed nod and slumped back into his spot on the bench. 

"Damn, that sucks. All of us got her, so I was thinking, y'know, if you  _also_ had her seventh period, we could all, like, leave for the bus stop together," Sean explained. Shawn snorted derisively from beside him, and Shaun laughed out loud. 

Emily merely shrugged. "Guess that won't work," she sighed. When it became clear that she wasn't interested in their conversation about basketball, the boys stopped trying to engage her. She didn't mind. Even though the snow hadn't let up, she was warmer on the bench, pressed up against Shaun. 

"Hey, that's the bus! Hey, Mr. Johnson, hey!" 

Shawn's yells brought Emily back to the moment as the skinny boy leapt to his feet and ran the ten feet from the bench to the bus stop sign. The other two boys followed suit more slowly, and Shaun offered both Emily and Sean a hand and pulled them to their feet. Sean thanked him with a slap on the back of his letterman jacket and ran to join Shawn at the sign, while Emily walked behind him with Shaun beside her. 

As the bus pulled up, its doors swung open and released a welcome blast of hot air onto the four teenagers. They got on one by one, Emily in front because "ladies first." She had to sidle past an old man standing near the front of the bus, but she paid him no mind. Her seat near the back, the one located directly underneath the heating vent, was unoccupied, and Emily wanted to get there first. The boys could fend for themselves. 

As the doors swung shut and the motor roared to life, Emily sat down and pulled her earbuds back out of her pocket. She stared out the window at nothing in particular, listening to her music. 

"Sir, will you take a seat, please?" she heard the driver say to the old man at the front of the bus. 

The old man laughed at this suggestion. "Certainly not! Now, where are we off to?"

"Uh, the last stop is still at the bus terminal. Why? You've asked me that four times already."

Emily tuned out their voices and focused on the man singing  _there lived a certain man in Russia long ago_ as her phone switched to the next song on her playlist. Faintly, she could still hear the old man arguing with Mr. Johnson, and she could hear Shawn, Shaun, and Sean trying to figure out their statistics homework in the seats behind her, but mostly she just heard the rumble of the bus's engine and the sound of Boney M singing in her ear. Not for long, though; the old man's voice was steadily rising in volume as he became more agitated. 

"Sir, I really need you to sit down—" Mr. Johnson began, turning away from the road for a moment to point at the several empty seats behind the old man. Emily felt her body tense as she mentally urged the driver to pay attention to the road, instead of some weird old guy. 

"Never!" the old man shouted, with a strange amount of glee in his voice. He clapped his hands together and laughed. The shrill sound grated on Emily's ears despite the fact that her music was still playing. 

"Hey man, siddown!" Shawn yelled from the back of the bus. Sean and Shaun joined in, shouting their own variations at him. The old man ignored their noise and stayed where he was, standing just behind the yellow line. 

_What's his deal?_ Emily wondered. She shifted her gaze from the window to the front of the bus and looked the man over. He looked... welll, he looked exactly like most of the other weird old men who cause trouble on the bus. He had long white hair, an equally long white beard and mustache, and looked to be taller than even Shaun, who was six feet and three inches. Well, he was really six feet and three and a half inches, but in Emily's (totally correct) opinion, after six feet anything less than a whole inch stopped mattering. 

The old man wore a deep purple robe with silver stars on it, like a cheap wizard costume from Party City or Mr. Fun's. As if that wasn't absurd enough, he had the 'wizard staff' to match—made from gnarled wood and adorned with a gaudy, obviously fake sapphire on top.  _Someone had a little too much fun designing Grandpa's cane,_ Emily thought to herself. The old man was also wearing a backpack, but his hair covered it almost completely. All she could make out was that it looked like the bag was empty. 

"Listen, mister, if you don't sit down right now, I have the authority to toss you off this bus," the driver said, clearly fed up with the old man's antics. Emily expected him to argue, maybe escalate to physical violence, but the old man simply nodded. He took a seat underneath the 'Please reserve these seats for the elderly and persons with disabilities' sign, laid his weird walking stick down beside him, and folded his gnarled hands in his lap. He didn't say a word for five whole minutes. 

"So, young lady, where are you off to?" 

Emily started. The old man was looking right at her, and she could see that his eyes were a bright yellow-green color, the shade of cartoonish radioactive material. He probably wore contacts, but the effect was the same as if they'd been his real eyes—it felt like the old man had briefly electrocuted her. And all he'd done was ask where she was going. 

Emily didn't want to give an exact answer... just in case. The guy seemed harmless so far, but it wouldn't be very smart to test that theory. She gave him a small smile and said, "My stop's in twenty minutes."

"No, no, no! I asked, what is your destination?"

Okay, this was getting weird. Emily gave him her best leave-me-alone smile. "My apartment building," she answered, hoping it would put an end to his questions. She didn't want to talk to anyone right now, least of all some weird old dude on the bus. 

The man either took the hint or simply got bored, because he turned away from Emily and started rifling through his backpack, looking for something. It took him quite a long time, considering that the bag looked completely empty. Eventually, he pulled out a huge door-stopper of a book, opened it to a random page, and began reading. Emily went back to her music, and the boys continued arguing about the best way to interpret the graphs in their math textbook. 

Five minutes passed. A young businesswoman got on the bus, but she sat as close to the exit door as she could and talked on her phone the whole time. She got off at the next stop, and the bus was once again filled with four teenagers, one weird old man, and the driver. 

From somewhere behind Emily, papers rustled and calculators clicked back into their cases. The boys must have finished their work. Not surprising; their stats teacher was famous for their relatively lax homework policies. Emily wished she had them, instead of a cranky old woman who always complained about her neighbors instead of actually teaching the class. 

Sean slid into the seat next to Emily, making her jump slightly. She hadn't heard him coming. She didn't jump when Shawn and Shaun moved to the two seats behind her, though, which was good, because they'd be much more likely to tease her about it. 

"Hey," Shawn said quietly. Emily turned halfway in her seat and nodded in his direction, but said nothing. 

None of the boys said anything else, until Shaun finally pointed at the guy up front and asked, "What's his deal?"

Shrugs came from the other three teenagers. "Maybe he's a performer, or something like that," Sean suggested. "Y'know, like those Disney princess ladies that do kids' parties and shit."

"They don't shit at the parties, dude," Shawn argued, and got a halfhearted slap from Sean for his trouble. Shaun and Emily ignored the other two and kept watching the old man. 

To his credit, the Party City wizard seemed to know they were talking about him. His bright green eyes snapped up to meet Emily's black ones and although she tried to look away, it felt like a string between the two of them had just been pulled taunt. Any movement might snap it, and  _then_ who knew what would happen?

The old man winked at her, and just like that, the 'spell' was broken. Emily blinked twice, trying to keep her eyes from watering too much, but it couldn't be helped. The air in the bus suddenly seemed much drier. 

The boys jumped a little in their seats as the old man's book closed with an audible  _snap_ _._ The man himself stood up and walked over to them. Although the bus rattled and shook as it traveled along a road plagued by potholes, the old man never stumbled. He didn't even reach for his walking stick. When he reached the seat across the aisle from Emily and Shawn, the old man sat down with a grace that none of the teens would have believed he possessed. His unnaturally bright green eyes once again locked onto Emily's gaze, but this time, the string was relaxed. Calm. 

"Would any of you youngsters like a word?" the old man asked, lifting his book slightly to emphasize his query. The boys all mumbled refusals, like they felt ashamed of something. Without breaking the old man's stare, Emily nodded instead. 

The effect her simple nod had on the man was almost comical... but at the same time, strangely heartwarming. He wiggled in his seat like an excited little kid, and his hands thumped the book's pages enthusiastically. He let out a sharp "Ee!" noise before he gathered himself and began flipping through the book, scanning page after page tightly crammed with words scrawled with a spidery hand. Nine pages later, he stopped, and clapped his hands together one time with an air of finality. 

"Aha! Miss Emelia, your word is 'malapert.' Enjoy it! I certainly shall." 

Emily blinked, finally. Emelia?  _Miss_ Emelia? 'Enjoy' the word? What the hell did any of that even mean?

She smiled uncomfortably and nodded again. "Uh, thanks," she said, "I'll definitely enjoy it." The old man smiled with satisfaction and went back to reading his book, ignoring the four of them entirely. 

The bus hissed and groaned as it came to a stop in front of a long brick building festooned with Christmas lights. This was Shawn's stop, 313 Stewart Avenue. The skinny boy thanked Mr. Johnson and stepped off the bus promptly, with the ease of ten years' worth of routine. He waved to the other three teens through the door before he turned and sprinted into the building's nearest light-covered doorway. 

Emily, Sean, and Shaun didn't talk much after Shawn got off. Emily put her headphones back in, although she fully expected someone to interrupt her music in the next ten minutes anyway. Sean tipped his head back and read all the advertisements along the upper walls of the bus, and Shaun took out his phone and watched a college basketball game. Thankfully, his phone's speaker was broken, so he didn't disturb Emily's music. 

The old man continued reading. His face was animated—he chuckled and scowled and frowned and smiled and scoffed and shrugged as the words on the page came alive in his mind. Emily wasn't sure why he was so invested in the book, given the fact that it had seemed like a dictionary just minutes before, but she didn't think about it too hard. She listened to her music, and she watched the old man read his book. At least he wasn't arguing with the driver anymore. 

The old man spoke up again just as the sound of  _Gonna hitch a ride, head for the other side, leave it all behind, never change my mind_ drifted into Emily's ears. For some reason, she willingly paused her music and turned to look at the man once more. They locked eyes almost immediately, and this time it felt like being caught in a bear trap. Was it her imagination, or were his eyes brighter?

Either way, she was beginning to think they weren't contacts after all.

She shook herself sharply. "Sorry, what'd you say?" Emily asked, once she realized that she hadn't heard a single word of whatever the guy had said to her. 

"I asked if you might like another word," he repeated, smiling. She shrugged. Yeah, what the hell. 'Giving' her words clearly made the dude happy, and he seemed mostly chill, so...

"Alright, sure. I want another word, Mr...?"

"Ah!" he gasped, clapping a hand over his bearded mouth. "How rude! I deeply apologize, Miss Emelia. My name is... John. Yes, that will suffice. John. Now! Your second word is 'medusiform!' I do hope you'll have fun with it."

Emily smiled back at the old man, at John. "Thanks. That's a cool word." John nodded enthusiastically. 

"...Can I have one?" Shaun asked. He'd put his phone away, and was leaning back in his seat with a bored look on his face. John licked his finger without replying and began paging through the book once more. 

"Shaun! My good friend, your word is 'muchity!'"

"Cool, cool. What's that mean?"

"Ah, let me see..." More licking of fingers, more flipping of pages. "Aha! 'Muchity' is defined here as 'great size or bulk'."

Shaun looked pleased at this. "You mean I got gains," he said, and lifted his left arm to flex in John's direction. Emily and Sean shared an eye-roll at this; Shaun never missed an opportunity to flex on anyone taller than him. He definitely had some kind of complex. 

The old man, to his credit, didn't look that impressed. "I suppose," he replied thoughtfully. "Though the book may have been referring to your substantial midriff." At this, Shaun just shook his head. His expression returned to a mixture of boredom and indifference, while John's face clearly bore his confusion at the teen's sudden silence. 

Emily could look away now (well, she'd looked away to roll her eyes at Shaun, but now she could  _really_ look away, properly). She shared a glance with Sean, whose eyes were angry now. She shared a second glance with Shaun, although hebarely looked at her. 

Just as Sean was about to open his mouth and tell the guy not to be rude, John spoke. 

"How rude of me," he said, with all his former playfulness gone from his voice. "Sir, I cry your pardon."

Shaun's forehead wrinkled in confusion before quickly smoothing as he realized what John had asked. Emily had to admit, the phrasing was kind of odd. 

That didn't matter. The message had gotten across, and Shaun accepted John's apology. After that, it was like a dam had been broken. Shaun, Emily, and Sean spent the next five minutes talking to John about everything and nothing, just talking to fill the space, fill the silence. John asked about their school (it sucked, they all agreed) and Sean asked about John's outfit (he adamantly insisted there was nothing wrong with it) and Emily got grilled from both sides about her favorite food (General Tso's chicken, hands down, even if it wasn't 'real' Chinese food). 

Sean got off next, at a stop two blocks away from a fairly large mall. He had a job there as an elf, helping out the mall's Santa. He  _hated_ the job, and never missed a chance to remind people of that, but the paycheck was outrageous. Emily had never heard of some high school kid getting paid sixty bucks a day to stand around with bells on his shoes for four hours. 

And then there were three. With Sean gone, the conversation became slightly less rushed—less immediate, if that made sense to anyone except Emily. None of the humor or fun was lost, mostly thanks to John, but the intensity eased off somewhat. Emily was glad. She could only answer so many questions, after all. 

Shaun got off at the stop on Wellin Street, although he normally rode for a little while longer and disembarked in front of a small park where his little cousins always hung out after school. He was in charge of watching them in the afternoons, and this particular afternoon was dedicated to the city's natural history museum. Apparently, his cousins  really wanted to touch some dinosaur bones. 

And then there were two. 

The talk between John and Emily never faltered, although they both left a few long gaps in between questions and answers. Neither of them minded all that much. Emily still found the old man's gaze arresting, but the string between his eyes and her own seemed to have dissipated during their earlier conversations. 

All those questions, and the kids had never asked John where he was from. The idea only came to Emily just as the bus's brakes squealed and her stop came into view. She quickly asked John, but instead of answering he simply tapped a thoughtful finger on his bearded chin and said, "That makes for quite a long story, Emelia."

_What, no 'Miss'?_ "How long?"

"Longer than we have, I assure you." He gestured with one star-spangled arm towards the door, which had just swung open. Emily sighed. She didn't want to part ways with the old man just yet. 

"Will you be here tomorrow?" she asked, switching to an easier subject. At least, it seemed like an easier subject until John shrugged and made it complicated with his answer. 

"That all depends," he said with a smile. "I shall certainly endeavor to meet you here, but, then again, I may simply... not." His eyes glittered and he continued smiling, like they'd just shared a private joke. Emily smiled back uncertainly and stepped off the bus. 

She turned around, just as Shawn had done, and looked for John inside the bus, but all the seats were empty, not counting the driver. 

**Author's Note:**

> comments/kudos are appreciated!


End file.
